Densho Digital Archive
Densho Visual History Collection
Title: Yosh Nakagawa Interview
Narrator: Yosh Nakagawa
Interviewer: Tom Ikeda
Location: Seattle, Washington
Date: December 7, 2004
Densho ID: denshovh-nyosh-01-0011

<Begin Segment 11>

TI: So go back to the bowling alley. You said you couldn't bowl unless you were with your group? So they had certain times?

YN: That's right, you had to be a Nisei, Nisei league, all Japanese American, because ABC, the association for bowling, had no place for Japanese to be a part of (their sanction).

TI: But could you just go down to the bowling alley and practice?

YN: And bowl, yes, and that was why Main Bowl was owned by Japanese (American Fred Takagi), was the starting point of the history of why people sixty years later are still bowling. It wasn't done out of, because America wanted them to bowl, it's because the persistence of the Japanese American to be a part (of the sport of bowling).

TI: Well, was there a sense that, could you have gone to other bowling alleys and bowled as Japanese Americans?

YN: You could, but there could have been silent things. They said, no, you could not go to Coleman swimming pool at Lincoln Park and swim, and that was a public park.

TI: So how did you know -- so this was a, a public, this is owned by the city...

YN: Because the sign's up there.

TI: And what, what did the sign say?

YN: It was, if it didn't say "No Japs Allowed," it made, it was very clear it was "whites only."

TI: Okay, so that, that also sort of exempted or didn't allow Chinese or Filipinos.

YN: That's right. That's right. Not only Japanese Americans. And many places the Jewish people, the Native Americans, the Hispanics, it was all subtleties that we understood: "You're not welcome." Fraternities and sororities of the great universities was very clear who could be a member of their group.

TI: Now, were you aware of this before the war? Was this something that, that you knew?

YN: No. But I did know one thing, I knew the places I wasn't welcome. They just, just told me to go home.

TI: And did the brat in you question that?

YN: Must have. It must have been a part of my resistance that maybe this is wrong. But I can't say. I think all of these things that happened to me is who I am today. I wish I could say I was so smart I knew, I don't think so. All these things had to be a part of my learning the awesomeness of America.

<End Segment 11> - Copyright © 2004 Densho. All Rights Reserved.